“It seems the California State government is bracing for an all out war with the Trump administration.”

The showdown over sanctuary city policies between California and the Trump administration continues to escalate.

After President Trump signed an executive order reinforcing current immigration regulations, politicians in our state’s government opted to counter that order by exploring ways to protect the non-citizens who are already here.

The cities and counties Trump is targeting have many tools to strike back. Among the most potent are high court decisions that have interpreted financial threats like the one Trump is now making as an unlawful intrusion on state’s rights.

…Democratic lawmakers in the state are trying to move fast to protect more vulnerable cities. Senate leader Kevin de Leon is championing a measure that would essentially make California a sanctuary state by prohibiting police anywhere within its borders from engaging in immigration law enforcement. Doing that could also give the state standing to sue the federal government as soon as it moves to punish a sanctuary city.

Another measure moving in the state Legislature would provide lawyers to immigrants detained by federal agents, which would force federal authorities to redirect enforcement resources to litigating tedious hearings. Lawmakers are also looking at banning federal agents from raiding workplaces and homes in search of people here illegally unless they have a warrant for a particular person. It’s a policy the administration could choose to ignore, but doing so would invite its own slog in court.

Additionally, California’s politicians are considering the withholding of financial transfers to the federal government. KPIX 5/San Fransisco reporter Melissa Caen has the details, and noted, “It seems the California State government is bracing for an all out war with the Trump administration.”

Officials are looking for money that flows through Sacramento to the federal government that could be used to offset the potential loss of billions of dollars’ worth of federal funds if President Trump makes good on his threat to punish cities and states that don’t cooperate with federal agents’ requests to turn over undocumented immigrants, a senior government source in Sacramento said.

The federal funds pay for a variety of state and local programs from law enforcement to homeless shelters.

“California could very well become an organized non-payer,” said Willie Brown, Jr, a former speaker of the state Assembly in an interview recorded Friday for KPIX 5’s Sunday morning news. “They could recommend non-compliance with the federal tax code.”

An IGS-UC Berkeley poll shows that 74 percent of Californians want sanctuary cities ended; 65 percent of Hispanics, 70 percent of independents, 73 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans. Recognizing strong public concern, California’s law enforcement organizations should speak out against being restricted from cooperating with federal authorities, and demand compliance to make our communities safer.

Furthermore, state officials who tout this idea point out that California is a “donor state” that sends in more money than it takes in federal funds for various entitlement programs. However, that is only one small pixel in the bigger financial picture.

The Democratic Party politicos really don’t face significant opposition within the state. I suspect that have underestimated the Trump administration’s ability to end the sanctuary cities that Californians don’t want anyway.

They may be empty in theory, but in practice, there are a lot of positive numbers in those Federally-controlled banks. An order to the banks to freeze all disbursements from the accounts to anyplace other than the Federal account doing the freezing would kill the State of California deader than disco. There aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to describe the condition of their bonds after this would happen.

If our stupid, leftist, hispanic legislature and governor do this, perhaps conservatives in California will organize to withhold our California income tax payments from Sacramento. I would support that.

Okay, so California could theoretically stop sending excise taxes they collect on behalf of the fed. How much per year does that amount to? They can’t do anything about corporate and individual fed taxes paid to the IRS.

If you take a close look at the War of Northern Aggression and not just the junk that you are fed in grade school, you will find that Lincoln started the war to “collet the revenues”. This was in his first inaugural address. In essence the war had nothing to do with slavery, but only Lincoln’s desire to collect tax monies. Yes, someone will point out that a few states seceded over slavery, but Lincoln was the aggressor and defined the terms of the war (as to Sumter, he sent 3 fleets to start combat, not feed soldiers who were fed by the townspeople).

The federal fort was indeed there as part of the federal government’s system for collecting taxes/duties/tariffs on commercial traffic using the harbor.

The fort and the money-collection function were both anomalies if South Carolina was not part of the United States.

Normally countries resolve such situations by negotiation.

Some of the citizens of Charleston didn’t want to do that. They quite deliberately wanted the separation from the US to be a forcible one. In other words, a war. The theory seems to have been that that would be more likely to make the split irreconcilable and permanent. That would allow the indefinite preservation of the South’s Peculiar Institution. These master planners believed that the fort gave them an ideal opportunity to start a real war.

As it turned out, the strategy was a poor one.

The ill-advised bombardment was by shore batteries on the fort. The fort did not fire on the town or on harbor traffic. No amount of Democratic revisionism can obscure that fact.

Now Tom, I told you that there was a grade school version and a real version. The real version is that Lincoln backed out on the deal and tried to force an invasion of Charleston Harbor with 3 fleets, not one rescue boat. The citizens were under attack. The CSA fired back. Don’t swallow the propaganda.

A couple facts: The federal government was funded by the south to the tune of near 85%. The south received in return about 15%. The money paid came from the import duties on goods brought back by the boats that delivered the southern exports. The federal government, led by Lincoln, raised the import duties to protect further the industrial northeast. As a result ships would have to return empty, the tariff was too high. Empty return ships drove the cost of southern export goods up, resulting in the Europeans finding alternate sources.

The war was fought over money, not slavery. Had there been no slavery, and it’s resulting animosity on both sides there may not have been a war, but slavery was not why it was started.

To be fair, the common soldiers on both sides were suckered into believing it was slavery/states rights for the most part.

Union troops occupying the fort by itself was an attack on South Carolina constituting an act of war. Whether you accept secession or not the federal government could have no authority over Fort Sumter. At least no according to the 1805 agreement between South Carolina and the federal government for its use. Here is that agreement.

“That, if the United States shall not, within three years from the passing of this act, and notification thereof by the governor of this State to the Executive of the United States, repair the fortifications now existing thereon, or build such other forts or fortifications as may be deemed most expedient by the Executive of the United States on the same, and keep a garrison or garrisons therein, in such case this grant or cession shall be void and of no effect.”- Statutes at Large, Volume V, p. 501

The federal government was legally bound by this agreement. It is indisputable that by 1861 Fort Sumter had never been completed. Its construction had been abandoned in the 1820s, nor had there ever been any federal garrison assigned to it. By the end of 1808 the federal government had’t fulfilled any of the conditions agreed upon. This means that the federal government could not have any claim of authority over the fort if South Carolina stayed in the Union. And if you accept secession then they also would have no claim of authority over the fort.

So how did Charleston start a shooting war when it was instigated by the Union invasion of Fort Sumter?

Shut down the highways, rail lines, air corridors at the border. Cut off the electricity, water. End all Federal payments sent into the state. Let then go to hell in their own handbasket. I am so tired of California trying to export their moonbattery to the rest of the country.

CA is behaving like imbeciles. The Feds have a mighty police force of their own and can roam SF at will. They can enter SF restuarants at will looking for illegals. They can block off streets looking for illegals at will. They can target Home Depots at will locking up the illegals just off company property. Ditto for LA, Sacramento, San Jose, San Diego, etc. Trump voters could care less that CA is screaming about these tactics.

The whole concept of “donor state” is wrong-headed, because it rests on the clearly false notion that all money the US spends within the borders of a state is for the benefit of that state. If the Pentagon buys pineapples from a Hawaiian farmer, that’s a gift to Hawaii, to be balanced against the taxes paid by all Hawaiians; it if buys office supplies from a company based in Connecticut, that’s a gift to CT, etc. Even more wrong-headed, money the US spends to maintain its own property is a gift to the state where that property is located. So since the feds own most of Nevada, thus choking off development and harming the state, and since it therefore spends large sums on that property, Nevadans are somehow beneficiaries of federal largesse. To state this proposition explicitly is to refute it.

I don’t think that CA is thinking this withholding thing through. There has to be a lot more money flowing from the Feds to the state, than the other way around – since individuals and corporations pay the feds directly, and some of their money gets turned around and set back to the states. Think block grants and the like. Plus, all the monies paid to the state and local govts to support all of the military bases, national forests, national parks, etc. And, they would be committing crimes if they withheld payroll taxes from their own employees. Plus, those employees wouldn’t get credit for the withholdings from their checks, and, instead, would likely be personally liable for the missing payments.

They may be able to order their LEOs to not cooperate, but cannot order them to stand in the way of federal LEOs, immigration personnel, etc., thanks to the Supremacy Clause.